It Started Simple Enough
by RiseoftheGuardiansFics
Summary: Once you make one mistake, the easiest thing is to make another and the hardest thing is to right it. Sometimes things can't be fixed and the only thing left to do is run away. Who would've guessed that getting service hours could lead to such disaster. Modern Day AU. Black Ice.


**Disclaimer: As I am sure you're very aware, I do not own Rise of the Guardians, the movie, the books, or anything like that. Well, at least not in a sense of having rights to them. I do certainly own products, but that wouldn't help me if I ever got sued for Copyright infringement. **

**This is a modern day AU and will become a Black Ice story as the plot develops. I hope it's to your liking!**

"Looks like there's no way around this one." Jack sighed, eyes still searching for some loop hole in the notice he'd received.

_This is a notice to all students who are at risk of failing the current semester. Potential reasons for this risk are listed below. Please note which items are marked. _

_-Receiving below 60% in any subject ( )_

_-Attendance rate below 70% ( )_

_-Failure to complete required service hours* _(x)

_It is strongly advised that you meet with your counselor at the earliest possible time in order to discuss means for absolving the problem(s) addressed._

_X__

_*For questions on the required service hours and opportunities, limitations, and other questions; please refer to your student handbook. A copy is available through the school website. _

"Don't worry about it, Jack! Just get the old man at the bookstore to sign off saying you organized the shelves a couple times. He's the best." Jack imitated his classmate's voice in a higher pitch than was accurate. "Yeah. The best at backing out last minute." He huffed and scribbled his signature.

There were two days left before winter vacation began. Two days to find ten hours worth of garbage to pick up or windows to clean.

Jack took a hooded sweatshirt from the back of his chair and pulled it over his head. Waiting any longer wouldn't do him any good.

The streets were crowded. They always were, especially during the holiday shopping season. It was easy to move between people without really being seen or noticed. You could slam full force into someone and be blocked off by a wall of people before the person had a chance to see your face. Cities were funny like that. Thousands of people could live there, but you wouldn't know half of them.

Jack eyed the stores, fast food joints, and anything else he passed by, wondering if any of them would have room to let some teenager roll in and fidget around. At department stores, all anyone could do was step on other people's feet. People were hired to do the cleaning and sorting. In terms of the big store financial world, finding volunteer work was virtually impossible.

The sun had set before Jack's feet had a chance to get cold. Sunlight sure didn't stick around much in the winter. He laughed and looked up at the cloudy sky. The moon was barely able to peek out from its blanket of clouds, clouds that were probably going to toss some more snow on the ground.

"I could shovel driveways." He muttered, half in thought, half in planning. It didn't sound like too bad of an idea, really.

"Yep! Rain for the next week. Looks like we'll have a swamp for Christmas, huh?" Some man was speaking loudly to a woman Jack assumed was his wife. The woman didn't appear to be all that interested. In-fact, she seemed rather annoyed.

"At least we'll finally be rid of all this snow." She said, more to herself than to her husband who had begun to make jokes about Christmas movies.

"That's just great." Jack rolled his eyes. His search was proving to be more and more fruitless by the minute. After a while, he decided to call it quits for the night. He'd have to suck it up and go to the counselor and grovel for service hour opportunities through the school or something. "Man." He kicked at a clump of ice, watching it skitter across the sidewalk and stop some ways away. As he started to kick it again, he froze. All the sudden, he got the sense that someone was standing there, right behind him. He spun around, but there was no one, just shadows. With less ease than before, he kicked the ice clump again. Unable to shake the feeling that he was being watched, he decided to turn back for home.

Jack pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt. It was knocked down again almost immediately from the wind. He laughed to himself and pocketed his hands once more.

The bulletin board outside the local supermarket had already failed him once that day. All of the advertisements were, for the most part, either lost animal posters or coupons for plumbers. Still, he decided he'd look one more time. Through the masses of torn and pasted over each other papers, it wasn't impossible to overlook something.

"No way." He stared at the advertisement in front of him. It was tacked in the middle of the board. "How did I miss that?" He grinned and leaned in closer to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him.

**This week only, Central Park Square and Nature Preserve is looking for volunteers to lead winter tours. All students over the age of fifteen are eligible. There will be no payment, but service hour requests are accepted. **

**Tours will take place from 9AM to 5PM every day.**

There were some pictures of the park, the types of people that would come on these tours (tourists, school groups, day cares) and most importantly, a number to contact.

Jack took the paper from the board, committed the number to memory, and folded the paper into his pants pocket. It wouldn't hurt to make sure that one poster was missing. What would hurt would be having a hundred and thirty students take the position first.

With a relaxed gait, Jack made his way home. There wasn't any reason to get started on any homework. He'd be spending the next two days at the park. When he got to his room, he gladly kicked his shoes off to some corner and pulled his cell phone from his backpack.

"It's not too late to call." He said more to convince himself than for any other reason. Not that there would be too many other reasons to talk to an empty room, he mused as he dialed the number. There was no answer, just one of the generic answering machine messages that came with any phone. Suddenly at a loss of what to say, he stumbled for some coherent introduction. "Um, hi. My name's Jack. I'm calling about the tours at the park. I'll... be there tomorrow. Have a good night." He shrugged and snapped the phone shut. Good enough.

The tours were less exciting than Jack had expected. Though there was really no formal training, it wasn't hard to get the hang of what to do. Depending on whether you were showing around a couple or a couple of kids, you just had to cater to what they'd be interested in. If there was a deer or some other animal trotting around, point at it. Mostly, it was a bunch of tourists wanting to get a glimpse at nature. There was plenty of it to see and the landscape was by no means flat.

It was almost kind of funny seeing the people from the really urban parts of the city come out. Sure, where he lived was plenty populated, but it didn't take too long to find some unpopulated place to explore.

"Oh look at that, honey! It's beautiful!" A younger woman, probably somewhere in her college years was pointing over the side of the bridge.

"That's what we call a river." Jack spoke under his breath and laughed to himself as the guy he assumed was her boyfriend came over to look.

"I've never seen anything like it before." He agreed and reached to hold her hand.

"It's like another world." She crooned and leaned against him. Jack rolled his eyes and leaned against the other side of the bridge. If a fish swam through, the two might just collapse from excitement.

"In the summer, there are magical creatures called ducks." Jack continued with his inaudible, joke of a tour.

"What was that?" The woman asked, turning to look at him. Jack stood up straight, worried for a minute that she was mad.

"Huh?" The boyfriend looked to the woman then to Jack.

"Oh. I thought he'd said something about bears. Did you say something?" She asked, looking a bit embarrassed. Jack let out a breath in relief. She hadn't heard him after all.

"Ah, no. I'd uh said that... there is more nature than most people are aware... of." He tried to put on a convincing smile.

"Thank goodness! My earmuffs must be thicker than I thought." She laughed.

"What did you think he'd said?" The boyfriend asked.

"Something about tourists getting trampled by bears." The two laughed. Jack laughed with them and rubbed the back of his head. So she'd heard his speech about bears after all...

The last group for the day arrived ten minutes after the tours had been scheduled to end.

"Sorry guys, you'll have to come back tomorrow." Jack shifted his weight, uncomfortable with the number of destitute stares he was getting from the group of kids. "It's really too dark out for this to be safe, you know?" This only made them look sadder. "All right, give me a minute. I'll go see if I can get the go ahead." He bit his lip and looked around for the woman in charge.

"Is there a problem?" She asked as he approached.

"Well, you see, these kids all showed up and really want a tour. Something about it being the last time they get to do this together before one of them moves pretty far away."

"Just have them come back tomorrow." She turned away, ready to dismiss him.

"They said that today's the only day they can do this. None of their parents know about it. They're supposed to be at practice or something but snuck off early. They can't pull that off again tomorrow." Jack looked back to the group of kids. They were out of ear shot, but when they saw him look back, every single one of them focused their eyes on him with the clearest showing of hope.

"Awh, come on." One of the other volunteers stepped up. "We can pull together who we have left and show them around. The people who've got to go can go home. What's ten more minutes?"

"You won't get extra volunteer hours for this, Scott." The woman's words contrasted with the smile on her face. "All right. So who's in?"

Jack motioned for the kids to come over. There was an explosion of cheers and "thank you's" as the make-shift tour group formed.

The woman decided it would be best to stay in the more lighted areas, but the kids had decided that the only real tour could be deep inside the forest preserve. With the encouragement of the kids and her overly eager group of volunteers, she was forced to concede.

One of the volunteers started a ghost story and, when noticing the delight it was met with, the group burst into a series of tales, both traditional and made up on the spot.

"Watch your step, kiddos. It's slippery around here." One of the volunteers warned as the approached a particularly uneven spread of trees. The volunteers had spread out to make sure they had someone on each side of the group to make sure no one slipped off unnoticed. Despite the warning, almost everyone fell or nearly fell. Jack caught himself on a tree branch and got a clear view of the wipe out. Everyone was laughing and brushing snow and slush from their clothes.

Jack caught sight of something moving and, with barely enough time to see where that flash went, it dashed behind a tree. It was easy to tell from the color that it was one of the kids from the tour gone off in search of his own adventure. With the story of one of the many monsters of the forests still playing in his head, he decided it would be the perfect opportunity to prank the sneakster. Grinning, he broke off from the rest of the group and followed.

"This way this way!" A hushed voice commanded.

"Be quiet already! I know where we're going."

"No you don't! You've never been there."

"Cram it, Mrs. Know-it-all, unless you want them to find us."

"No one saw us go. It's fine. We'll join up with them in a couple minutes. You need to see the devil tree, though."

"I know! That's why I came with you."

Jack held a hand to his mouth to keep from laughing. The two kids continued back and forth bickering over the existence over this supposed "devil tree," a tree capable of transporting you to another world entirely. People had even gone missing, or so the noisier of the two kids proclaimed. Curiosity peeked, Jack decided to wait on scaring the kids until after he'd seen the tree.

"And now you go through here and you're there!" The first of the kids exclaimed, struggling to push the branches of some dead trees out of the way.

"No way!" The voice of the other kid exclaimed from the other side of the mass of branches. Jack pushed through them and stumbled out onto the other side. In front of him was a rather impressive tree. It looked like it had been hit by lightening. Its roots poked through the ground.

"See? I told you it was there." The kid pulled the scarf tighter and ran to the tree, excitedly pulling a glob of some purple thing from the middle. "And here is the fruit!" The 'fruit' looked like a bunch of raisins glued together. A discarded, empty box of raisins to his left told him he might just be right.

"I can't believe it's real..." The two walked around the tree talking quickly. "Wait. What's over here?"

"No! Don't go that way-" The rest of the sentence was drowned out by a scream. Jack ran forward, nearly losing his balance as he was forced to halt to a stop. In front of him was a drop off of well over fifty meters.

"Help! Annie!" Jack stood beside the kid he learned to be Annie and looked over the drop off. The other kid was hanging on to a ledge.

"Sammy..."Annie looked to Jack, a combination of pure terror and extreme guilt in her eyes.

"Don't worry, I've got this." He lifted himself over the edge and slid to where Sammy clung. "You're fine. You're fine. Just grab my hand." Jack dug his fingers into the soft, snow-clad ground beside him and reached the other out to the kid.

"I'm going to fall!" He shouted, his voice heavy with tears. He looked down, watching loose rocks skitter down the steep drop off.

"No you're not." Jack grabbed the kid by his hood and dragged him to where he stood. "I've got you. Just climb up. Come on! You can practically see the top. You've got nothing to be worried about." Jack encouraged. Sammy held on to Jack with all his strength, too afraid to move.

"I can't." He sobbed.

"Sure you can! It's like rock climbing. Besides, if you slip, I'll just catch you again. Relax! It'll be fun. You like rock climbing, don't you?"

"Only if I have a harness." Sammy sniffed, but his grip loosened a bit.

"Give it a shot. If it's too hard, we'll figure something else out, right Annie?" Jack flashed a smile at the girl whose head poked over from the side.

"Yeah." She answered uncertainly. "Just try."

With only a quick nod, Sammy tried to find a grip on the slope. Jack dug the sides of his feet into the ground beneath him, refusing to slip even an inch.

"This isn't too bad." The boy muttered and climbed up a few steps.

"See? What did I tell you." Jack let go of the boy's coat, though he was ready at any second to reach out and catch him.

"You're almost there!" Annie shouted, choked with something close to relief. As soon as he was close enough, Annie grabbed his arms to help him up the edge.

"Be careful. You don't want to slip." Jack warned and took a step upward. Just then, the ground beneath his feet crumbled and he fell. He heard the kids shout but was unable to see what had happened. Jack slid faster and faster down the slope, unable to get a hold on anything. The snow and ice that coated the ground made slowing impossible. The uneven ground only threw him tumbling toward the ground.

By the time he finally hit the bottom of the slope, his head was spinning and aching too much to allow him to move. He shut his eyes and tried to wait for the world to stop spinning. It didn't. He knew that, long before things would stop spinning, he'd black out.

Before he did, he was briefly aware of someone beside him. That someone lifted him cautiously into their arms.

"All of that for a child you didn't even know." The voice had a chiding tone to it. Jack slid into unconsciousness, laughter being the last thing he heard.

**A/N: That did not come out the way I thought it would, so I am kind of disappointed. Hopefully it was semi-decent and hopefully the other chapters come out better. Any questions, comments, or complaints; please feel free to leave them. **

**Thanks for sticking it out to the end of the chapter. I hope to see you next time.**


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